The Catholic World, Vol. 11, April, 1870 to September, 1870

by Various

There have been, and no doubt are still, abuses in the church growing out of its human side, which need changes in discipline to reform them; but these abuses have always been exaggerated by the best and holiest men in the church, and the necessity of a change in discipline or ecclesiastical law, as distinguished from the law of God, is seldom, if ever, created by them. When evils exist that menace both faith and society, it is not the church that is in fault, but the world that refuses to conform to the law as she declares and applies it. It was not abuses in the church that were the chief cause of the revolt, the heresy, and schism of the reformers in the sixteenth century; for they were far less then than they had been one, two, three, or even four centuries previous. The worst abuses and greatest scandals which had previously obtained had already been corrected, and Leo X. had assembled the Fifth Council of the Lateran for the purpose of restoring discipline and rendering it still more effective. The evil originated in the temporal order as represented by the state, and grew out of secular changes and abuses. It was so then, it is so now, always was and always will be so. Why, then, demand changes or reform in the church, which cannot reach them? The church causes none of the evils at any time complained of, and offers no obstacle to their removal, or the redress of social grievances. It is for the temporal to yield to the spiritual, not for the spiritual to yield to the temporal. Very true; and yet the church may condescend to the world in its weakness for the sake of elevating it to harmony with her own ideal. God, when he would take away sin, and save the souls he had created and which he loved, did not stand aloof, or, so to speak, on his dignity, and bid the sinner cease sinning and obey him, without stretching forth his hand to help him; but made himself man, humbled himself, took the form of a servant, and came to the world lying in wickedness and festering in iniquity, took it by the hand, and sweetly and gently led the sinner away from sin to virtue and holiness.

For four hundred years, the church has sought to maintain peace and concord between herself and the state by concordats, as the wisest and best expedient she found practicable. But concordats, however useful or necessary, do not realize the ideal of Christian society. They do not effect the true union of church and state, and cannot be needed where that union exists. They imply not the union, but the separation of church and state, and are neither necessary nor admissible, except where the state claims to be separate from and independent of the church. They are a compromise in which the church concedes the exercise of certain rights to the state in consideration of its pledge to secure her in the free and peaceable exercise of the rest, and to render her the material force in the execution of her spiritual canons, which she may need but does not herself possess. They are defensible only as necessary expedients, to save the church and the state from falling into the relation of direct and open antagonism.

Yet even as expedients concordats have been at best only partially successful, and now seem on the point of failing altogether. While the church faithfully observes their stipulations so far as they bind her, the state seldom observes them in the respect that they bind it, and violates them as often as they interfere with its own ambitious projects or policy. The church has concordats with the greater part of the European states, and yet while in certain respects they trammel her freedom, they afford her little or no protection. The state everywhere claims the right to violate or abrogate them at will, without consulting her, the other party to the contract. It has done so in Spain, in Italy, and in Austria; and if France at present observes the concordat of 1801, she does it only in the sense of the "organic articles," never inserted in it, but added by the First Consul on his authority alone, and always protested against by the supreme pontiff and vicar of Christ; and there is no foreseeing what the present or a new ministry may do. Even if the governments were disposed to observe them, their people would not suffer them to do so, as we see in Spain and Austria. Times have changed, and the governments no longer govern the people, but the people, or the demagogues who lead them, now govern the governments. The European governments sustain their power, even their existence, only by the physical force of five millions of armed soldiers.

There is evidently, then, little reliance to be placed on the governments; for they are liable, any day, to be changed or overthrown. The strongest of them hope to sustain themselves and keep the revolution in check only by concessions, as we see in the extension of suffrage in England, and the adoption of parliamentary government, under a constitutional monarch, in Austria, France, North Germany, and elsewhere. But as yet the concessions of the governments have nowhere strengthened them or weakened the revolution. One concession becomes the precedent for another, and one demand satisfied only leads to another and a greater demand, while it diminishes the power of the government to resist. What is more, the closer the union of the church with the government the more helpless it becomes, and the greater the hostility it incurs. The primum mobile of the movement party, as we now find it, is not the love of honest liberty, or a liberty compatible with stable government, or the establishment of a democratic or republican constitution; and it is not hostile to the church only because she exerts her power to sustain the governments it would reform or revolutionize, but rather, because it regards them as upholding the church, which they detest and would annihilate. The primum mobile is hatred of the church. This is the reason why, even when the governments are well disposed, as sometimes they are, the people will not suffer them to observe faithfully their engagements to the church.

Here was the mistake of the brilliant but unhappy De la Mennais. He called upon the church to cut herself loose from her entangling alliance with the state, and throw herself back on the people; which would have been not bad counsel, if the people were hostile to her only because they supposed her allied with despotic governments, or if they were less hostile to her than the governments themselves. But such is not the fact at present. The people are to-day controlled by Catholics who care little for any world but the present, by Protestants, rationalists, Jews, infidels, and humanitarians; and to act on the Lamennaisian counsel would seem very much like abandoning weak, timid, and too exacting friends, to throw one's self into the arms of powerful and implacable enemies. When, in the beginning of his reign, the holy father adopted some popular measures, he was universally applauded, but he did not win those who applauded him to the church; and his measures were applauded by the outside world only because believed to be such as would tend to undermine his own authority, and pave the way for the downfall of Catholicity. The movement party applauded, because they thought they could use him as an instrument for the destruction of the church. In the French Revolution of February, 1848, originating in deep-seated and inveterate hostility to the church, the ready acceptance of the republic, the next day after its proclamation, by the French bishops and clergy, did not for a moment conciliate the hostility in which the revolution had its origin. They were applauded indeed, but only in the hope of making use of them to democratize, or secularize, and therefore to destroy the church as the authoritative representative of the spiritual order. The bishops and priests, all but a very small minority, showed that they understood and appreciated the applause they received, by abandoning the revolution at the earliest practicable moment, and lending their support to the movement for the Establishment of imperialism; for they felt that they could more safely rely on the emperor than on the republic.

These facts and the reminiscences of the old French Revolution, have created in the great majority of intelligent and earnest Catholics, wisely or unwisely, we say not, a profound distrust of the movement party, which professes to be the party of liberty, and which carries in its train, if not the numerical majority, at least the active, energetic, and leading minds of their respective nations, those that form public opinion and give its direction, and make them honestly believe that Catholic interests, which are not separable from the interests of society, will be best protected and promoted by the church's standing by the governments and aiding them in their repressive measures. Perhaps they are right. The church, of course, cannot abandon society; but in times like ours, it is not easy to say on which side lie the interests of society. Is it certain that they lie on either side, either with the governments as they are, or with the party opposed to them? At present the church neither directs the governments nor controls the popular or so-called liberal movement; and we confess it is difficult to say from which she and society have most to dread. Governments without her direction want morality, and can govern only by force; and popular movements not inspired or controlled by her are blind and lawless, and tend only to anarchy, and the destruction of liberty as well as of order, of morality as well as of religion as a directing and governing power. We distrust both.

For ourselves personally, we are partial to our own American system, which, unless we are blinded by our national prejudices, comes nearer to the realization of the true union as well as distinction of church and state than has heretofore or elsewhere been effected; and we own we should like to see it, if practicable there, introduced—by lawful means only—into the nations of Europe. The American system may not be practicable in Europe; but, if so, we think it would be an improvement. Foreigners do not generally, nor even do all Americans themselves fully understand the relation of church and state, as it really subsists in the fundamental constitution of American society. Abroad and at home there is a strong disposition to interpret it by the theory of European liberalism, and both they who defend and they who oppose the union of church and state, regard it as based on their total separation. But the reverse of this, as we understand it, is the fact. American society is based on the principle of their union; and union, while it implies distinction, denies separation. Modern infidelity or secularism is, no doubt, at work here as elsewhere to effect their separation; but as yet the two orders are distinct, each with its distinct organization, sphere of action, representative, and functions, but not separate. Here the rights of neither are held to be grants from the other. The rights of the church are not franchises or concessions from the state, but are recognized by the state as held under a higher law than its own, and therefore rights prior to and above itself, which it is bound by the law constituting it to respect, obey, and, whenever necessary, to use its physical force to protect and vindicate.

The original settlers of the Anglo-American colonies were not infidels, but, for the most part, sincerely religious and Christian in their way, and in organizing society aimed not simply to escape the oppression of conscience, of which they had been the victims in the mother country, but to found a truly Christian commonwealth; and such commonwealth they actually founded, as perfect as was possible with their imperfect and often erroneous views of Christianity. The colonies of New England inclined, no doubt, to a theocracy, and tended to absorb the state in the church; in the Southern colonies, the tendency was, as in England, to establish the supremacy of the civil order, and to make the church a function of the state. These two opposite tendencies meeting in the formation of American society, to a great extent, counterbalanced each other, and resulted in the assertion of the supremacy of the Christian idea, or the union and distinction under the law of God, of the two orders. In principle, at least, each order exists in American society in its normal relation to the other; and also in its integrity, with its own distinctive nature, laws, and functions, and therefore the temporal in its proper subordination to the spiritual.

This subordination is, indeed, not always observed in practice, nor always even theoretically admitted. Many Americans, at first thought, when it is broadly stated, will indignantly deny it. We shall find even Catholics who do not accept it, and gravely tell us that their religion has nothing to do with their politics; that is, their politics are independent of their religion; that is, again, politics are independent of God, and there is no God in the political order; as if a man could be an atheist in the state, and a devout Catholic in the church. But too many Catholics, at home and abroad, act as if this were indeed possible, and very reasonable, nay, their duty; and hence the political world is given over to the violence and corruption in which Satan finds a rich harvest. But let the state pass some act that openly and undisguisedly attacks the rights, the freedom, or independence of the church, in a practical way, it will be hard to find a single Catholic, in this country at least, who would not denounce it as an outrage on his conscience, which shows that the assertion of the separation of politics from religion so thoughtlessly made, really means only the distinction, not the separation of the two orders, or that politics are independent, so long as they do not run counter to the freedom and independence of religion, or fail to respect and protect the rights of the church. Inexactness of expression, and bad logic do not necessarily indicate unsound faith.

Most non-Catholics will deny that the American state is founded on the recognition of the independence and superiority of the spiritual order, and therefore, of the church, and the confession of its own subordination to the spiritual, not only in the order of logic, as Il Signor Cantù maintains, but also in the order of authority; yet a little reflection ought to satisfy every one that such is the fact, and if it does not, it will be owing to a misconception of what is spiritual. The basis of the American state or constitution, the real, unwritten, providential constitution, we mean, is what are called the natural and inalienable rights of man; and we know no American citizen who does not hold that these rights are prior to civil society, above it, and held independently of it; or that does not maintain that the great end for which civil society is instituted is to protect, defend, and vindicate, if need be, with its whole physical force, these sacred and inviolable rights for each and every citizen, however high, however low. This is our American boast, our American conception of political justice, glory. These rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are the higher, the supreme law for civil society, which the state, however constituted, is bound to recognize and obey. They deny the absolutism of the state, define its sphere, restrict its power, and prescribe its duty.